


stronger than the mighty oak

by windfalling



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:50:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8194390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfalling/pseuds/windfalling
Summary: In another time, Samar might have joked with him: we have to stop meeting like this. (This: her standing in dark rooms and hallways, lost and alone and unguarded, the hitch in her voice stripping her bare.)  Now, though, Ressler is the last person she wants to see.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Minor canon-divergent AU where Ressler is the one who finds Samar at the end of 3.13 first, instead of Liz. Takes place somewhere in S3B. It's also my attempt at reconciling Ressler's characterization throughout S3 lmao.
> 
> (I blame all of this on tumblr user @confidxnteveryday)

 

 _I’m getting married_ , Levi had said.

Her fork had slipped. Just for a split second, her guard down, the surprise rippling through her body. Then she’d pulled herself together congratulated him with a smile, the metal warm between her shaking fingers.

He had looked so happy.

She thinks of his lighter, that rueful smile, _I did but then you left me._ The warm press of his mouth, moments before he’d been shot. His body lying frighteningly still on a hospital bed.

It was never going to be her and him, she knows. But sometimes, she likes to imagine it, likes to wonder—would that be her wearing his ring, now, if she hadn’t left him, if she had called him those nights when she’d wanted to but never did?

The footsteps behind her slow to a pause.

Samar curls her shoulders inward, turning her head down and away.

“Navabi?”

Her name, hovering hesitantly in the air. Of course it would be him, she thinks. In another time, she might have joked with him: _we have to stop meeting like this._

(This: her standing in dark rooms and hallways, lost and alone and unguarded, the hitch in her voice stripping her bare.)

Now, though, Ressler is the last person she wants to see.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“In my experience,” he says, “when a woman says _I’m fine_ —”

“—she means that she’s _fine_.” It comes out harsher than she means it to be, and she closes her eyes, still facing away from him. “Please, just—just go.”

His shoe scuffs against the floor, as if he’d taken a step away, then paused. “Should I—do you want me to get Liz, or—”

“Whatever makes you feel better.” She does glance at him this time, and he’s just looking at her, face tight.

“Fine,” he says tersely, and he walks away.

(Liz finds her a few minutes later, and Samar can’t decide whether she’s grateful or not.)

 

 

 

 

They’re partners, which means that Cooper gets to send them off on assignment alone for days, which means that her life is in the hands of someone who does not trust her, which means that she does not trust _him_ , either.

(And maybe she’d broken it first, maybe she’d lied to his face and went behind his back, but it had all been to protect Liz, and in the end, isn’t that what she’d done? Protect her, where his actions had only placed Liz in danger?

She knows why he reacted the way he did. Understands it, even. Still—

 _I didn’t think you should’ve gotten your job back_ , he had said, and it surprised her, how much his words hurt. How much she had wanted things to go back to how they were before.)

Neither of them have told Cooper that it had been Aram, not Ressler, who wrote the recommendation. They can be professional when they need to be. But this situation between them is untenable, and they both know it.

 

 

 

 

“Jesus, Navabi, you’re never gonna let that go, are you—”

“—doing the same thing, for _Liz_ —”

“— _not_ the same thing, and you know—”

“And stop acting like it wasn’t personal, because it—”

“I’m sorry.”

Her next word is caught in her throat, and she blinks at him, her anger slipping away. Then he sighs and says, “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

She stares at him incredulously. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

Through her earpiece, Aram says, _“Um, guys? You do know that your mics are on, right?”_

“You know what I think?” Samar says, her breath coming out harsh between her gritted teeth, uncaring of who hears her. “I think that one day, you’re going to meet someone who doesn’t fit in that little black-and-white box of yours, and it’ll destroy you.”

Ressler stares back at her, jaw clenched. But then his eyes narrow, and he looks at her, softening in the way he does sometimes in the face of her anger: a short laugh in response to her insults, a smile instead of a snarl.

He says, “I think I already have.”

 

 

 

 

(Something she will never admit:

She had liked seeing Special Agent Donald Ressler come undone; liked how his hands had felt, splayed across her back; liked how he had kissed her in the morning, too, the look on his face warmer than she’d ever seen it.)

 

 

 

 

“If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to punch you in the face,” she mutters, eyeing the smirk curling his lips. His hand rests at the small of her back, warm through the fabric of her dress.

“Let me guess: you’d be rich.”

“Enough to buy an island.”

He snorts. “What would you even do with your own private island?”

“Nothing. Anything. Get away from you,” she says lightly.

He corners her next to a plant by the wall and steps close. She presses her lips to the rim of her wine glass, peering over his shoulder to look for their target.

“Do you really hate me that much?” There’s a strange note to his voice that she does not dwell on.

“Move a little to your left,” she says. Ressler shifts, and she catches a glimpse of a man in a blue tie, his profile a potential match to the target.

“Navabi.”

She meets his eyes. “Do you?”

“What?”

“Still hate me,” she says. “For what I did.”

Ressler swallows, and the movement at his throat distracts her for a moment. He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Samar sighs. “Come on. We should move closer to the bar. I can’t tell if it’s him from here.”

 

 

 

 

The one good thing about being around Ressler is that her annoyance with him eclipses everything else. She doesn’t have to think about Levi or his pretty fiancée. She can just think about Ressler, her partner, who might still hate her, and she can hate him in return. It’s easier, that way.

There’s a knock at the connecting door between their rooms. “It’s unlocked.”

Ressler opens the door, stopping at the threshold to lean against the wall. “I updated Cooper on the situation,” he says. “Our guy is supposed to show up tomorrow evening, so we’ll probably be here for at least one more day.”

“Alright. Thanks.”

Samar kicks off her heels and goes to stand in front of the floor-length mirror, pulling out the pins in her hair. She can see Ressler reflected in the glass. He hasn’t moved. He just watches her, face unreadable.

She says, without thinking, “If you’re just going to stand there, why don’t you come over here and make yourself useful?”

He looks at her in surprise, their eyes meeting in the mirror. It’s a dare, one that she hadn’t realized she meant to make until she did. She holds his gaze until he finally walks nearer, until he stands behind her, silent and unsure.

“My hair,” she says.

His hands are gentle as they probe through her curls, pulling out pin after pin. Samar watches his face as he does, tracing the furrow between his brow, the line of his mouth.

“They’re endless,” Ressler mutters, bewildered, and she has to bite down a smile.

After, he runs his fingers through her hair to make sure all the pins are gone. When a few strands become tangled in her necklace, he unhooks it. A shiver runs through her, unbidden, when the chain slides against her skin.

He undoes the hook of her dress. She holds her breath, waiting for him to slide the zipper down. But he doesn’t move—his hand rests flat on her back, the other curved around her waist, waiting, too.

She wonders if he’s thinking of that night they spent together. She wonders if he hates himself for it.

She goes cold at the thought, body tensing. His hands fall away, leaving behind a faint imprint of warmth that quickly fades.

“I don’t hate you,” he says suddenly. “Maybe I did, at first. I was angry. I don’t like it when things are… uncertain. Difficult to define, or predict.”

“Human beings are often unpredictable,” she says dryly.

“ _You_ are unpredictable,” he says quietly, and she falls silent. “I trusted you. And you—”

Ressler exhales sharply, jaw clenching, and this, _this_ is where they get stuck. His rigid principles confronted with hers, more malleable and flexible.

“—you were right,” he finally says. “You and Liz and… _Reddington_. I thought I would be able to protect her. I was doing what I thought was right.”

It is the last thing Samar would have expected him to say. She’s tempted to make him repeat it, just for good measure.

“So… thank you, for what you did. And I hurt you. I know that now, and I’m sorry.” He rubs at his eyes. “For real, this time.”

She reaches out, resting her hand against his face. He goes still, then leans into her touch—compromising, yielding before her.

Samar takes a deep breath, then releases it slowly. “Okay,” she says, and in that moment, she forgives him.

“We’re good?”

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “We’re good.”

 

 

 

 

Samar doesn’t let him undo her dress, but she does sit with him on his bed, a bottle of wine between them, her own confessions spilling out of her mouth: _Levi’s getting married, and I don’t know what I’m doing._

It’s easier, somehow, the second time she says it aloud. Ressler rubs her back through her unsteady breaths and says awkward clichés like _he doesn’t deserve you_ and _he’s an idiot_ and _do you want me to rough him up_ (to which she replies, _I’m not so sure that you’d win_ ), and that isn’t the point, not really, but it helps somehow.

She doesn’t sleep with him—the aftermath of what happened last time still lingers in her mind, and she does not want to unbalance this new thing between them, whatever it turns out to be. But she does kiss him goodnight, and it’s worth it for the way he smiles against her mouth.

Samar smiles back at him, and it’s the lightest she’s felt in weeks.

 


End file.
